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If it isn't obvious that today's smartphones and PDAs pack in more features than their predecessors, it's time to pull your head out of the sand. Obviously, smartphones like the Nokia E90 and PDAs like the O2 Xda Atom Life are definitely better than the 9300 Communicator and the Xda Trion. Aside from boasting deeper feature sets, these newer gadgets are better at traditional things, such as sending texts or handling calls.

As manufacturers and developers come up with new technologies to squeeze out more of the same size, it's inevitable that smartphones and PDAs will soon make your breakfast, do the laundry, and bring you to work. Well, manufacturers have to first solve current problems such as facilitating text input, providing faster and more reliable connectivity, and of course longer battery lives.

Another area that's crucial to mobile gadgets' growth as do-it-all devices is memory capacity. In fact, without lots of memory, a gadget's capabilities are pretty limited. That's why Samsung's recent press release announcing the development of an 8GB MicroSD is exciting news. 8GBs is a lot of space, especially when we're talking about the mobile world. And it's pretty amazing that someone can cram in that much capacity in a fingernail-sized memory card.

8GBs can handle a lot more contacts, appointments, and notes than your typical smartphone and PDA does. And 8GBs can also store lots of multimedia (2,000 songs, double that in photos, and hundreds of videos, depending on the quality you use).

In other words, the more memory mobiles and handhelds have at their disposal, the more they can do. Which is why memory breakthroughs like Samsung's 8GB MicroSD are yet another reason why smartphones and PDAs will eventually do it all.